Legal humor. Seriously.

Posts from January 2010

I have not devoted nearly enough space here (yet) to the phenomenon of horrifyingly bad lawyer advertising of the kind that you tend to see during "Judge Judy" or on very-late-night TV. While lawyer advertising in general is not especially good, for various reasons the really bad stuff generally seems to be generated by personal-injury attorneys. I have mentioned Glen Lerner, "The Heavy Hitter," at least once, but there are many other examples.

So it is refreshing to see an ad on behalf of a law firm, especially a personal-injury firm, that is creative and genuinely funny. That's how I would describe this one, which was mentioned in the New York Times this week:

It is a great ad, especially because it acknowledges the greedy-lawyer stereotype and makes it funny. This one, called "Machete," is almost as good.

My ulterior motive for posting about this today is that I managed to get myself quoted in the NYT article about this new ad campaign. The quote itself is a little lame, I think, but there it is. (I also sort of wish the reporter had not described me as taking "perverse pleasure" in some of the things I post about, but I guess that's more or less accurate.)

I have quite a few examples of remarkably bad advertising clips that I have used in presentations and will try to get posted here shortly. For now, the "Attorney Ad Gallery" that now appears over in the left sidebar contains some good and bad examples of this kind of commercial speech.

Those of you who live in Ohio and have recently been attacked by a rabid animal, please be aware that you only have four months to ask for compensation under state law. (File now - you can thank me later.)

A little-known (but now somewhat better-known) Ohio law allows anyone injured by a rabid animal to ask the local board of county commissioners to reimburse him or her for up to $1,500 in medical expenses incurred as a result of said injury. See Ohio Rev. Code sec. 955.41, 955.42. David Froehlich learned about this law after he found a bat on his finger while doing some work around the house. (That's what it said -- he thought he had been pricked by a staple, but then found "there was a bat on his finger.") That led to the kind of violent hand movements you would expect from somebody who has just found a bat on his finger, which left the culprit bat laying stunned in the yard. It tested positive for rabies.

Either Froehlich got his paperwork in late or (more likely) just didn't learn about the law for a while. I imagine that if a rabid bat gets its fangs in you, the thought "I'd better tell my county commissioners right away" is probably pretty far down the list of thoughts you might have. Whatever the explanation, Froehlich missed the four-month deadline by two days.

Delaware County commissioners voted on January 14 to grant him compensation anyway, noting that the law had been interpreted to give them discretion to ignore the deadline. (One consideration: Froehlich's medical insurance did not cover the treatment. Hopefully, the plight of those uninsured against bat-inflicted health problems will become part of the national health-care debate. Assuming that debate is still going on.) The vote was unanimous, although at least one commissioner griped that he thought these claims should go through the state health department rather than ending up on the county agenda. He did admit that it was a "rare situation," but still seemed a bit irked by having to deal with it. "I hope we never see it again," he said.

According to its website, the Public Policy Polling firm got its start in 2001, so it's only been polling for nine years. Given the low numbers for politicians generally, though, it still seems like a pretty remarkable achievement to be named the "most unpopular person we've polled anywhere at any time," as one of the survey's authors described former presidential candidate John Edwards.

The poll found that Edwards was viewed positively by only 15 percent of voters in North Carolina, his home state. I guess it depends how you look at it, though. Given that, as the Huffington Post put it, Edwards "cheated on his cancer-stricken wife while possibly fathering a child out of wedlock, all while running for the presidency of the United States," maybe what's most remarkable is that 15 percent of voters still view the guy positively.

Predictably, the numbers varied according to party, with 25 percent of Democrats still somehow having a positive view of Edwards, a number that dropped to nine percent of independents and three percent of Republicans. It seems unlikely to me that even three percent of Republicans still think John Edwards is a super guy. Probably they thought the pollsters were asking about Jonathan Edwards, the preacher known for the light-hearted romp "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God":

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

The pollster, Tom Jensen, said that the previous unpopularity-record holder was Sen. Roland Burris, also a Democrat, although Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) was "in that territory as well." Jensen said that Republican creeps like John Ensign (R-Nev.) have tended to fare somewhat better than Democratic ones. "What we find," he said, "is that Republicans will forgive you for cheating on your wife as long as you are a Republican." But "Democrats are not forgiving Edwards."

Responding to what must be the first and only nuisance complaint ever based on the music of John Denver (based on its volume, anyway), police in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, ticketed a man on January 13 after neighbors complained the Denver tunes were still blasting at 3 a.m.

According to the report, Officer Ryan Williams pounded on the man's door and, while doing so, "recognized the songs of the late singer John Denver." The man did not answer the door until the officer called him by name after talking to one of his neighbors. When Williams asked the man why the music was so loud, he responded that he was just "rocking out."

I know I just got done criticizing a judge for ordering searches and seizures based only "on a hunch," but I think this is different. If someone tells police he is "rocking out" to John Denver music, that alone should be probable cause to search him and his apartment, and possibly his car and all his friends too. Because something just isn't right there.

The term "due process" is hard to define exactly, but one thing it doesn't mean is "we do this all the time," a lesson that a judge in Tennessee learned the hard way. Judge Durwood Moore was censured last year, and now faces a lawsuit, for what was allegedly a routine practice of forcing courtroom spectators (not lawyers or defendants, but spectators) to undergo drug tests if he suspected them of being under the influence.

Benjamin Marchant alleges that in January 2009, he had driven a friend to the courthouse and was sitting in the courtroom waiting when Moore suddenly ordered officers to seize him. He alleges he was taken into custody and required to provide a urine sample for testing. He was let go after the test came back negative, but, surprisingly, was not especially pleased by this treatment and filed an ethics complaint against the judge.

Moore was censured last May after reaching an agreement with the panel that investigated the case for the state's Administrative Office of the Courts. The letter of censure relates the facts above and states that the seizure and the testing were illegal, unconstitutional, and, most horrifying of all, violated at least three of the Canons of Judicial Conduct. The panel described the public censure as "the highest degree of judicial discipline authorized by law short of the Court seeking a judgment recommending your removal as a judge from office." It concludes by reminding Moore that he should accord all citizens appearing in his court their constitutional rights, so that's nice too.

Although the pleadings related to the censure don't seem to be available, Marchant alleges that Moore provided a written statement to the panel admitting he "routinely drug screens 'spectators' in his courtroom if he 'thinks' they may be under the influence of drugs or alcohol." He alleges that Moore acted "on a hunch" but without probable cause. (Is a "hunch" not probable cause these days? When did the terrorists win?) Marchant is also suing the officers who took him into custody when the judge ordered it, alleging that "[o]nly a plainly incompetent officer or a knowing participant would have taken place in such unlawful and unconstitutional procedures."

Interestingly, on the same day that the panel imposed the "highest degree of judicial discipline authorized by law" for this incident, it did the same for another incident in which, using profanity, Moore allegedly threatened an attorney with contempt if he didn't show up in person to present a certain document. I guess if all your censures are imposed on the same day, they only count as one.

Mike Sacks, currently a third-year law student at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has embarked on a quest to be the first one in line to see at least the major cases be argued at the Supreme Court this term. (I can vouch for the fact that third-years tend to come up with projects like this that do not involve going to class. I tended to go to the big museums, just a few blocks from the law school, although to be honest my usual class-alternative project was to pull the covers over my head.) He is blogging about it at his new blog, First One @ One First, a great name derived from the fact that the Court is located at One First Street NE, which is just a short walk from the law school.

For the really big cases, you apparently must be willing to camp out the night before if you want to get one of the 50 general-admission tickets. Mike managed to be first for Citizens Unitedv. FEC, a major campaign-finance case that had additional star power because it was the first case argued before a Court that included Justice Sotomayor. He camped out at 11 p.m., although as it turned out nobody else showed until 3:45 the next morning. Mike says that for the really big show last year, District of Columbia v. Heller, people started lining up the afternoon before. Although maybe those are the scalpers.

Actually, it's hard to think of a situation in which doing this would not create a conflict of interest, but if you represent a client in divorce proceedings even though you are the one his spouse has been cheating with, that seems like a pretty clear conflict.

Technically, the attorney's violation in this case was held to be "failing to inform his client that he had an affair with the client's wife prior to representing him in a divorce proceeding against the wife," not the affair itself. I guess we could quibble about which ethical rules this technically violates, but the end result is still going to be a suspension.

Luckily for the attorney involved, this happened in Tennessee, which like most states has abolished the tort of "alienation of affection." Among those not having abolished it: Mississippi, where in 2008 an attorney was alienated from $1.5 million after a client successfully sued him for creating a conflict of interest in a similar way.

Michael Winston Hicks is the name of a suspicious individual who is on "the list," according to the TSA.

It is also the name of 8-year-old "Mikey" Winston Hicks, left, who according to a January 13 New York Times article is therefore searched virtually every time he goes through airport security, and has been since 2004.

Mikey was frisked for the first time at Newark when he was two years old.

The TSA insists Mikey is not actually one of the 2,500 reportedly on the "no-fly list," and that is apparently true; but that is only one of the many lists the government now has going. Not that it matters, because none of them do any damn good (so I'm not changing the title of the post), but he is apparently on the "selectee" list of 13,500 people, which is less stupid but not significantly less stupid. "A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don't catch him," Mikey's mom was quoted as saying. "But my 8-year-old can't walk through security without being frisked."

The various lists are perfect examples of "security" measures that make it look like someone is doing something useful, but are easy for bad guys to avoid, while causing enormous hassles for the rest of us. (I'm sure they are the source of much hilarity whenever terrorists get together. Just wait till they get a look at the full-body-scanner images once those start getting posted on the Internet.) The Times article cites another famous example, that of Mario Labbe, a Canadian who started having trouble with security in this country after September 11, frequently experiencing lengthy delays and, for a reason he never figured out, "mysterious questions about Japan." This went on for almost seven years. In 2008, he changed his name to "Francois Mario Labbe." End of problem. Luckily, a terrorist would never think of using a different name.

As the Times also noted, the TSA's website has a section called "Myth Busters" that lists a series of "myths" about security practices and offers corresponding "busters." It includes this:

I guess when you have as many friends in the Middle East as Israel does, you can afford to humiliate one of them.

Turkey, which has been an ally of Israel's for some time, is threatening to recall its ambassador if it does not get a formal apology for how he was treated in a recent meeting with an Israeli deputy foreign minister. Israel is upset over a Turkish TV series that, among other things, shows Israeli spies kidnapping babies and converting them to Judaism. Complaining about that is understandable, but how it was done seems remarkably, and comically, childish. Specifically, the minister summoned the Turkish ambassador to complain about the matter, and made sure he only had a little-bitty sofa to sit on:

He also invited journalists to the meeting and said he wanted them to make clear that the Israeli officials were "in much higher chairs" than the ambassador. (The picture above is from an Israeli newspaper that marked the elevation difference and labeled it "the height of humiliation.") Also, he pointed out that they had taken the little Turkish flag off the table entirely, and that "we are not smiling." Point made? In a subsequent interview, the minister said that "in terms of the diplomatic tactics available, this was the minimum that was warranted" given repeated provocations by Turkey. I guess by giving him a sofa at all they were retaining the ability to escalate if necessary by taking the sofa away next time.

After Turkey complained about the deliberate humiliation of its ambassador, the Israeli minister apologized, saying in the future he would behave "in a diplomatically acceptable manner" and that "disrespect is not my way," although it sort of seems like it is. Unsatisfied, Turkish President Abdullah Gul demanded a formal apology and said if it did not get one, its ambassador would be recalled and would be on the first plane home tomorrow. (He'd better fly Turkish Airlines because you know El Al will stick him in coach.)

For future reference, the height of humiliation looks to be maybe eight or nine inches.

Alfred Hightower had been on the run since 2007, when a warrant was issued for his arrest on drug-dealing charges. Hightower was apparently from Kokomo, Indiana, but had fled to Canada. His downfall, though, was that he spent a lot of time in World of Warcraft.

That was not a place he could hide from intrepid Howard County Sheriff's Deputy Matt Roberson. Roberson heard through the grapevine that Hightower was in Canada, and began gathering information about him to see if he could confirm that. A source told him that Hightower regularly played an online game that the source described as "some warlock and witches game." That sounds like the source was maybe somebody's grandma, but it didn't take Roberson long to guess that this was probably World of Warcraft.

Roberson then contacted Blizzard Entertainment, the company that runs the game (which has, remarkably, more than 14 million players worldwide), and asked if it would help track Hightower down. Blizzard is located in Orange County, California, and so was beyond the reach of a Howard County subpoena. But after three or four months, Blizzard handed over the info. It gave up Hightower's IP address, online screen name, account information and history, and billing address. Either the billing address was not current or Roberson is as big a geek as I am, because he located Hightower by running an IP address search that allows you to determine longitude and latitude, plugged that into Google Earth, got an address, and called the Mounties.

The report has a link to Hightower's actual character information on the Warcraft website. Surprisingly, he was not able to defeat the Canadians even though he is a level 80 shaman who wields a Titansteel Spellblade in his Deadly Gladiator's Ringmail Gauntlets. On the other hand, he is more of a healer than anything else, so he may have just been overwhelmed by the formidable Mounted Police of the North. They picked him up in Ottawa and deported him.

It seems to me like there are a few unanswered questions as to how exactly the deputy got his man (or whatever). Roberson admitted he "knew exactly what" Hightower was playing because he "used to play it" himself. Maybe Rastlynn the Shaman killed the wrong elf online, and ended up paying for it in real life.